ID Inquiry + Infinite Money

My MSc thesis won an $80k AFRL grant and I’ve gotten a few conference papers published. No journal articles. No grants reviewed. There is general institutional inertia in the direction of the kind of research I’m interested in, so I’m focusing on self publishing empirical and mathematical work with likeminded ID researchers. Everything I research can be done with a computer, so there is no need for the institution in the first place. The goal is to generate useful and lucrative technology from the ID research, in which case there is no need for the institutional credibility either. That’s the good thing, at least, about capitalism.

Researching the nature of intelligence seems to have everything to do with ID, doesn’t it?

The approach I’ve been working on is suggested by Scott Aaronson: if the mind really is non-computational, then it should at least be able to solve problems that require a program that requires storage larger than the physically available resources, whether that is the size of the brain, all of earth’s history, or the entire history of all possible multiverses.

Another approach I am looking at is if the mind is a halting oracle, and you give it a set of executing Turing machines, then using its oracular powers the mind should be able to find more compressible bitstrings more frequently than any algorithmic approach to the halting problem.

A third approach is context free human in the loop machine learning. If the human mind is better at detecting abstract patterns than computers, then they should be able to improve machine learning results without any problem domain knowledge.

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I think the many discussions we IDists have had with @swamidass on this forum demonstrates ID is at least testable. He seems convinced that ID can be empirically falsified, and that is at least one of Popper’s criteria for a scientific theory.

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Please explain how researching the nature of intelligence can provide any positive evidence for the intelligent design of all biological life on Earth. That is ID’s basic premise, isn’t it? That all life and all species in the planet’s 3.5+ billion year history of life were Intelligently Designed?

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Yes, I would in fact agree with this characterization, and seems to be a logically necessary conclusion of ID theory, or any theory that wants to make sense of the world. The law of information non increase means all should be a chaotic void if reality were only a product of chance and necessity. The fact it is not means that something outside of chance + necessity, i.e. ‘magic’, exists.

Not precisely true. I believe that ID cannot be falsified. However, many specific arguments can be falsified. Others cannot.

No, ID’s basic premise is intelligent activity can be empirically distinguished from chance and necessity. Most often this is applied to biological history, hence your confusion.

You seem to claim otherwise in our exchanges. ID claims that intelligence can be empirically detected. You state none of the theory is empirically tractable, and that you can prove this. But, if ID cannot be falsified, then you cannot disprove the empirical tractability.

So ID says nothing at all about biological life being designed? Maybe you should let the folks at the DI know that because it’s pretty much the only thing they argue.

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Well, in the broadest sense I agree with ID. I agree God created us, and in this sense designed us. I do not think that is falsifiable except in a counterfactual world. I still affirm MN, and agree science should be silent on questions of God.

However, I disagree that 1+1=3, which is what most ID arguments (especially those in information theory) look like to me. I do think 1+1=3 can be falsified regardless of the larger context.

They are broadening their scope. The Discovery Institute's Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

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Maybe what you are seeing, is that they are in the thrall of being successful – which is not quite the same thing as being in the thrall of naturalism.

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I haven’t seen much success come from strictly followed methodological naturalism, since it implies everything is chaos. I’d submit that the success you talk about is due to the vestiges of intelligent design from the originators of science. As academia becomes more institutionalized naturalism, the effective science seems to drop off.

It seems like you did not get much exposure to standard science during your PhD. Can you tell us more about it?

You were a student of Marks, who is a leading ID proponent, and you were in the engineering school, which has some scientists, but many faculty their are not scientists. Did you and your group have good relationship with scientists? What was experience with science outside your group at this time?

I’m feeling some empathy for you here. It sounds like you did not get to experience science during your whole PhD. This is very unfortunate and very sad.

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I’ve never seen any need to follow methodological naturalism. Science is more a matter of following the evidence.

I have no idea where you are getting that implication of chaos.

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Exactly, that is why science works, because no one consistently follows methodological naturalism.

Can you explain how, say, the Standard Model of particle physics doesn’t follow methodological naturalism?

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Please supply some examples of scientific research and results that didn’t use methodological naturalism. Or maybe your definition of methodological naturalism is different than the one everyone else uses.

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All science diverges from methodological naturalism insofar it assumes any sort of consistent order to the world. This is because order cannot come from chance + necessity.

You dodged the question again. Please supply some examples of scientific research and results that didn’t use methodological naturalism. If you wish to retract your claim just say so.

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This is an odd definition of MN. What do you mean by order? I drop a rock off the top of a tower a thousand times and each time it drops to the ground with the same acceleration, because of gravity. This is consistency and order without a need to invoke anything other than “necessity” (i.e. physical laws).

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